“I’m okay with my son….I’m okay with my son.” She made me say it as she pressed on my hand and head. “Now tell me what it is you are mourning for him?” She asked me before she stated “and by the way your body feels empathy too deeply.” (Ha! Ya think?)
“What are you mourning,” she asked again. “I don’t know…..loss…lost opportunity maybe. He won’t have a typical childhood. His future will be limited.” I stumbled over my words.
I sat there…numbly asking myself what was even happening? No seriously. What on earth was going on right now?!?
We had come in that afternoon for an initial chiropractic consult for the Boy. The hope being to have her relieve some of his pain. An hour later I was the one sitting on the table in some weird eastern medicine, pressure point driven, therapy session that she felt at the end of his adjustment we needed to take a moment for.
“Okay lets have you take a turn mom,” the woman said to me. I nervous laughed and replied “Honey were going to need more than ten minutes to take an It’s a Small World Ride through my emotions, but sure why not.” I took my place on the table.
“Let everything go. Now hold your hand here and again say…I’m okay with my son…..just as he is,” the Shaman instructed. That’s what we’re now calling her for purposes of this story.
“What is it? Something past? Something present? Something past? Childhood….helplessness. A point when you felt you should have helped someone….and couldn’t.” Oh man I can list several of those points from my growing up years…all hard and shaping moments. The apparent therapy session I was navigating continued as she just sprinted deep right into the dark places of my mind. What was happening?!? Everyone knows the happy people have the most baggage…..this game was dangerous.
We had come here to see this particular chiropractor because also specializes in a practice called quantum neurology. It specifically works in conjunction with the nervous system, and the messages it sends to the body. Her specialty was more in line with the type of restorative techniques I felt we would need to maximize strength gains for the Boy.
What I did not know was that we were going to dive down an emotional rabbit hole, and start calling out stress by it’s names. The Boy had gone first…you know since this was his appointment.
In short order, she had gotten him to verbalize his personal three points of stress. Wait for it….1. A sense of helplessness 2. His mother 3. Money. After they’d been named, she got him to expound….. all while I sat there silently. Kind of hard not to take #2 personally.
He feels my stress and worries for me, and he worries that we have spent time and money, and not figured out what is “wrong” with him. Sucker punches were flying off that table like confetti! Then she pushed and touched here and there at points on his body, and I watched my not two minutes before quippy son burst into tears. Before my eyes a gate opened.
“Why am I crying right now?!?” he mumbled in bewilderment.
“Your body is letting go of things you’ve been holding in. This is good,” the Shaman assured him.
You guys!! What on earth. I’m not going to go into an hours worth of physical things that were adjusted and assessed. There’s a list of reasons why I cannot discredit her wholistic approach even if some of it was rather unfamiliar to me. She identified physical issues in his body in conjunction with what know exist after months and months of appointments. She was on point on so many of his challenges.
I’m a person driven by logic, but this appointment was so many things not logical.What started with a “can you help relieve pain” ended in both my son and I verbalizing things we had no intention of verbalizing that day….and possibly never. Things Im not sure we even knew we needed to say.
That night I sat next to him on the couch and pulled my ten year old into my lap. I held him close, and spoke in a quiet tone “I love you…..just as you are. You are enough….just as you are. You do not need to worry about me…or dad…or money. We will do whatever is necessary to help you and your sisters because that’s what parents do. Your job is to do your exercises and make sure you are doing what you can to strengthen your body…..everything else isn’t yours to carry.”
I felt his whole body begin to sob and as tears fell down my cheeks too… I thought no matter what comes of the days ahead…..those words needed to be said as much as heard.
To be determined as to the scope of what all the Shaman can physically help us with…..but she likely just saved us years of therapy. Sometimes you have to step outside of the box especially when your struggle has no easy solution. Here’s to jumping down rabbit holes.
Summer Smith is a speaker, writer, and motherhood blogger. She and her family are currently navigating the suburbs of Northern Virginia. As the mother to four young children, Summer maintains her sanity thanks to her sense of humor, copious amounts of coffee, and Amazon Prime. Maya Angelou once said, when reflecting on her childhood, that her mother left an impression like technicolor stars in the midnight sky. Influenced by these words, Summer blogs at her website Motherhood in Technicolor, and can also be found on her Motherhood in Technicolor Facebook page.